Animals are subject to many of the same musculoskeletal, circulatory and neurological problems that affect humans. For example, animals can suffer from problems associated with aging or competitive based injuries. Examples of health issues faced by animals include Osteoarthritis, urethral urolithiasis in the horse, tendon injuries, bicipital tenosynovitis, intestinal anastomosis, ischemic tissue survival (pre surgical), increasing osteoblastic development, increasing ROM, enhanced healing of chronic bone infections, regeneration of periodontal tissues following periodontal disease, increasing stimulation of osteogenesis in the bone-ligament interface, increase in collagen production, acceleration of tendon rupture healing, aiding peripheral nerve regeneration and pain reduction.
Animals often have unique physiological characteristics as compared to other animals and, of course, humans. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to be able to tailor the medical treatment of an animal to its specific physiological characteristics to facilitate the best possible outcome from the medical treatment. This is especially important in treating animals as an animal is often not able to understand that it is ill or injured and take appropriate steps on its own (e.g., unlike a human who might understand the benefit of, and be able to, undergo bed rest or stay off of an injured limb). Accordingly, anything that can be done to speed the recovery of an illness or injury is especially useful in the context of veterinarian medicine.
A need exists for a system and method of non-invasively treating tissues of an animal, where the treating of the tissue may be tailored for the unique physiological needs of the animal and administered in a standardized manner using standardized diagnostic criteria. In addition, a need exists for a system and method of assessing the efficacy of a tissue treatment in a standardized and non-biased manner.